


forget the paths written in the palm of your hand (and close your eyes, I'll lead you)

by cookiedoug



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy finds his mum, Happy Ending, M/M, Post S3, Pre series, mentions of physical and mental abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25196743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiedoug/pseuds/cookiedoug
Summary: He’s packing when he comes across the Teddy bear, throws it into the dumpster.(When later that night he sneaks out to get it back it stinks of filth and it’s stained, much like love.Billy wants to cry, laughs instead, it’s like a shot of whiskey to the heart.It burns burns burns.Cleans up one of the bear’s paws, smooths out the hairs coming into one of its eyes “You’re lucky I am a shitty liar too”.)
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 10
Kudos: 87





	forget the paths written in the palm of your hand (and close your eyes, I'll lead you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Hokan).



> Inspired by [this beautiful work](https://hokanm.tumblr.com/post/622731875770925056/its-gonna-be-ok-billy#notes) <3 from [hokan](https://hokanm.tumblr.com/)! <3

Billy finds her. His mom.

Living just a few hours away. Two-story house. Flowered driveway. American-dream painted walls and a tiny home for the family’s retriever. Eight years, eight fucking years –with its days and nights and nights and nights, and hours wasted in the waiting, tears like wiped off feelings on the back of his hand– and she had been just a few miles apart, not even a whole state, not the entire fucking earth.

She's married (never was to his dad). She's got another kid. She walks him to the bus stop every morning, smiles him a soft smile, nuzzles on his cheek. Kisses him goodbye.

Billy knows because he's been watching them for three days now.

(Restlessly)

(Obsessively)

The kid is called Sam.

He's tall for his age, blonde like Billy, is always smiling the widest smiles. He looks so much like his old photographs that the tendons of his hands hurt with the force he's holding on to the steering wheel, with how much strength it’s taking him to not get out of the car, come face to face with her, ask _–scream, cry, shout–– how can you look at him?, **how** the fuck can you look at him and tell him that you love him when every time you told **me** was a **lie**?_

(She loved him)

(He knows)

(He hates her)

(He doesn’t)

So,

It’s two more days of watching until he finally grows the guts to knock at her door.

She hugs him (Feels like she used to. Smells she used to. Sounds like she used to. Like fingers that always knew how to find the tickles. The freshly washed cloth of his pajamas when they got stuck in his nose. Like funny stories whispered at night when he should’ve already been sleeping).

She cries.

Tells him, “I can’t, baby. I can’t”

Tells him she doesn't want him back.

Doesn't say it like that. Says,

"I have a family now, Billy. A good thing. A happy thing. And I can't lose them, do you get that?"

_Lose them._

They don't know about Billy. In this new life of hers, he doesn't exist. In the life she left behind, she's but a memory ripped out off a perfect family picture that never was. 

In the back of his car he has a ratty backpack stuffed with the things he would save from a fire: his favorite shirt, the black leather jacket he won in a fight, a tin box full of seashells, a packet of postcards sent by his Grans, a few library books he had loved too much, so never returned.

The teddy bear she gave him the night she said _“It won’t be long, baby. You’ll blink and I’ll be back”._

There was this clear notion, bright as dawn, had kept ripping the wound open like a hook on his mind _"If only I could find her, If only I could find her, If only I–”_

He spends the next two days drunk as fuck, high as a kite, anesthetized, so he doesn't burn everything she has rebuilt herself around.

(Around easy-smiling, blonde-headed, _happy_ Sam)

That’s how Neil finds him.

"What did you think? That she would want you back? Nobody wants their shit back, son. I told you. Didn’t I? I wasn’t just me who she wanted to left when she ran”

He drives behind Billy all the way back, and Billy pumps up the music until it feels like his skull would crack, loud enough not to feel trapped, hunted down. Not to think about how there was only one place he wanted to run to when he got away, pushed the pedal down.

(Neil has been blocking all the roads out, all his life. But this time, Billy has no place to go, no dreams left to wish for when Neil checks them into a shitty motel somewhere on the Highway wasteland)

"I was worried about you. I’m Sorry" Max says a few nights after, casting a sideways glance at the yellowing remnants of the lessons Neil _had to_ teach him again that night. A trail of blood marking the way from California to the only love he had ever had.

(Though he had)

"You're a shitty liar. But I don't give a fuck"

(Except he–)

_(No)_

They move to Hawkins before the end of August.

He's packing when he comes across the Teddy bear, throws it into the dumpster.

(When later that night he sneaks out to get it back it stinks of filth and it's stained, much like love.

Billy wants to cry, laughs instead, it’s like a shot of whiskey to the heart.

It burns burns burns.

Cleans up one of the bear’s paws, smooths out the hairs coming into one of its eyes "You're lucky I am a shitty liar too”.)

.

"It’s cute", says Steve more than two years later, the day he adopts Billy like a stray, spends the day helping him settle in the tiny room of his tiny house. It’s been three months since Billy was released from the hospital and still can’t do the most basic, simple of things. He used to think that if he grew bigger than everything around him, nothing would hurt him anymore. Now he would laugh with his whole body at the idea If his ribs didn’t ache like a motherfucker when he does too much.

“My mom gave it to me. The day she left” he says, because there’s no point, because Steve Harrington has already seen him at his smallest and he doesn’t really care anymore.

“Oh. Billy. _I_ \--”

Billy stretches out his arm, closes his eyelids. It’s the worst feeling of all, but he _hopes_.

"Yours"

There are no words, no breathe, no sound at all, just seconds tumbling down as uneasy as the pounding in his heart.

But Steve reaches out, caresses the back of his hand, takes the bear, comes closer.

The light brush of his thumb over Billy’s cheek feels like the edge of tears. So tender and soft. So caring.

And the way Billy feels around Steve is old, but this is new. 

“You can. If you want. I’m not gonna break, pretty boy”

But he’s a shitty liar because it’s going to. Break him. This love like a sledgehammer, shattering down his poorly patched walls. He wants it to. There’s nothing he wants more than Steve Harrington conquering and destroying all those places where the old Billy Hargrove used to be.

And oh, he conquers. Oh, he destroys.

_(Gets in. Gets in)_

He leans in and kisses him, delicate as fingertips brushing over sunburn. Spreads his palm over that spot on his chest where Billy’s skin is now thinner, more sensitive to the touch.

Lowers his eyes to the teddy bear pressed between them.

"To keep it?"

"Only if you want"

Steve smiles against his mouth, breathe trembling. His hand goes up, fingers tangling on the short curls of his head, alighting the nerves of his scalp, skin tingling.

"Something else you wanna give me?"

"Don’t be greedy, Harrington. That’d be pushing your luck"

But he knows he’s now the place Billy would run to. He has learned to read love between the lines.

"Call me arrogant, Hargrove, but I don’t think I am"

_“Arrogant”_

Billy curls his hand around the nape of Steve’s neck.

Kisses him right.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](https://withoneheadlight.tumblr.com/)! <3


End file.
